Gunsmithing at Colonial Williamsburg

[TheWabbit]

It's not a great picture, but I snapped a quick shot of the gunsmith shop at Colonial Williamsburg in VA last weekend. These guys are building rifles and pistols using the same methods of the 1700s. On the bottom left is the rifling machine. It has small teeth at the end of the shaft that requires 200-300 passes for each barrel.

The gunsmith shop was definitely my favorite place at Williamsburg.

 

[Spear Dane]

Wow. I've watched you tube vids on barrel forging. It's an incredible amount of work.

 

[throttletony]

very cool.

There's an interesting little town in western Illinois called Nauvoo - it's run as a historical site by missionaries from the LDS (Mormon) church and/or the Community of Christ Church (re-reformed LDS Church) depending on the historic site. It was a hub for early Mormon pioneers (and others) and had a small boom rivaling Chicago in the late 1830s.
Anyways, there is a historical Browning gunsmith shop there. This shop belonged to the daddy of John Moses Browning who was born in Ogden, UT (1850s) after his dad migrated west with the Mormon pioneers.

 

[darend505]

Great pic! Will be heading there at the end of next month!

 

[Gaffer]

Here is a great video of the Master Gunsmith Wallace B Gusler building a rifle, I am pretty sure this is at Williamsburg, but it is an old video, since he was pretty young here. Just amazing how they did all of this.

[video=youtube;bAzJOULyx5c]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAzJOULyx5c[/video]

Ron